


Silhouette in the Dusk

by Corin



Category: The 100 (TV), The 100 Series - Kass Morgan
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Speculation, momory loss theory, post 6x06
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-05-13 05:47:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19245055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corin/pseuds/Corin
Summary: Clarke was forgetting. But there was one person she promised she will never forget. And she intended to keep that promise.*post 6x06 based on the memory loss theory*





	Silhouette in the Dusk

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, this is my very first bellarke fanfic, so please go easy on me, but this idea was stuck in my head since I read the theory of Clarke possibly losing her memories in the next ep and well, this little thing was born. I hope you will like it and I didn’t butcher the characterisation (too much ;p)

She was forgetting. 

With every moment, every trial, with every hit on the wall, that was the very being of Josephine Lightbourne, her steel will and the merciless sense of superiority, every drawing that disappeared from the walls of her old cell as if someone was slowly and systematically taking out colorful glass from the kaleidoscope of her life. 

Clarke was forgetting. 

The first one erased was a brilliant young mechanic. In one second she remembered all the adversities that they had overcome together and all the pain they had inflicted on each other, and in the next there was nothing. The uncomfortable feeling that when she talked to Finn, when she had ended things between them, there was someone else there. Somebody important. Her mind struggled with a sense of a strange dissonance, an attempt to sort out facts that made no sense. At least until Finn disappeared too. Like with a snap of your fingers. One second he was here, the next he was gone. And the problem ceased to exist, except for the inexplicable sense of loss. 

The drawings came and went, but when they went away, they did it for good. 

However, memories aren’t everything that people carry within themselves. Memories are like a trigger, a fuse that lights you a path towards feelings, and these are not so easy to erase. 

Clarke's head forgot. Raven, Finn, Wells, her mom and dad. Lexa. Madi. 

But her heart remembered. Sisterly love, bumpy and difficult. First love, so sweet and naive. The love of a friend hiding her from the world in his embrace. Parental love, full of unimaginable sacrifices. Explosive love, full of passion and pain. The love of a child, with adoration in her eyes and admiration on her face. 

And so the walls became empty. 

Well, almost. 

One drawing still remained. 

She held onto it with everything she got. 

Her lantern probably didn’t fly away, forgotten and abandoned, leaving her sins still on the ground, but... she didn’t really need it to absolve her of her crimes. In the end she didn’t want a magic wand fixing her mistakes. She will do it herself. In this very moment. By not breaking the promise she made. 

Because she gave him the word that she wouldn’t forget him and she would keep it, even if it was the last thing her shattered soul would do before the sweet oblivion. 

 

*~*~* 

 

The scream that came out of her throat sounded like an agony, that somehow was granted a voice of its own. 

Clarke jumped out of her bed in a daze. Her head pulsed, eyes couldn’t focus. She hesitantly touched her face, feeling a pleasant chill of her palms spreading to her hot cheeks. With a childlike admiration, she looked at her fingers which bent and curled according to her will. 

She came back. She really came back. 

…but where to? 

That her mind didn’t know. An unknown room, an unknown place full of trinkets that meant nothing to her. Stray thoughts tried to find even a shred of information, glue them together into... something. But what to do when there is nothing to look for? She was empty. 

Almost. 

"Bellamy." Clarke's voice sounded bad even to her own ears. As if she had not used it for years. As if she forgot how to use it. 

Panic slowly grew in her, sneaking up on her mind like a predator on a newborn lamb. 

Where is she? How did she get here? And what is she doing here? 

Fearfully, she looked around, tensely expecting people to storm into her room any second now, awakened by the noise she made, but it didn’t happen. Is it possible that the soul and heart-rending cry is not worth any attention here? Is there really such a place where a scream at the top of one's lungs in the middle of a night is just... normal? If so, she didn’t want to stay. 

A sudden moisture on her lips shook Clarke out of her reverie. Black droplets dripped from her nose like the sand grains in an hourglass. What were they counting down to? She didn’t know and didn’t want to find out either. 

The blonde rushed out into the corridor, carried in equal measure by fear and hope. 

She wanted to shout, Bellamy's name at the tip of her tongue, but something held her back. The memories may have been erased, but instincts remained. Clarke's thoughts raced hundreds of kilometers per second. Endless corridors seemed like a maze, but eventually something broke through the veil of lost knowledge. 

She saw a scene that must have happened recently. A hug that made her feel she belongs again. ...where was it? The girl’s bare feet were freezing because of the cold floor, but this feeling was only an additional motivation to keep going, not to stop. As if she was running away from something, though only the darkness of the abandoned corridors chased her. 

The tavern! A sudden revelation. Finally. That's where she put her biggest secret into different words. Where ‘I love you’ became ‘you're important to me’. It wasn't wrong, she wasn't lying, yet she hid the real truth behind a glass made of guilt. Thin enough to see that there's something on the other side, but blurry enough to confuse anyone who wouldn’t know what they are looking at. 

With new energy she run to find the way out. Towards a second chance. At life. And at breaking through that cursed glass.

 

*~*~* 

 

Bellamy was lying on the bench near the lake, staring at the stars. Though the hours had passed since he came here, and the temperature had fallen to the unpleasant coolness, he couldn’t bring himself to go back to the tavern. To, once again, see the resignation in the eyes of his friends and the pure despair on Madi's face. 

He promised her, less than an hour after they met, after she saved his life. 

 _I won't let anything happen to Clarke._  

What a fool he was to make such a promise. Not in their world, where you can hold someone in your arms in one instant and watch their death in next. 

He kept thinking about that girl from the recording from long ago. Did she suffer a lot? How long it took before she vanished entirely? Was she afraid? Felt lonely? Abandoned? ...did Clarke felt like that too, when they put this damned chip in her head? She called him important, called him a family and yet he didn’t say anything in return. He persuaded himself that there's no need to rush, that they finally have time. 

They didn’t. Not at all. 

Bellamy felt fresh tears running down his face. The old ones already dried and he was convinced that there was nothing left in him. Not anymore. Well, just another thing he was wrong about. 

Initially, he didn’t pay attention to the groaning of the big, old hinges that reached him from the side of the main building. Russell had promised them safety, and this one lonely night he didn’t care about any other secret rituals performed in the middle of the night by the Primes, as long as they stayed away from his people. 

However whoever decided to choose that moment for a stroll, apparently had no intention of respecting the invisible line that Bellamy drew. Steps, wobbly and uncertain judging by the sound, inexorably approached the tavern. The windows of the building were still illuminated by a faint light, as if no one could really fall asleep that night. 

Using his sleeve, Bellamy quickly wiped away the tears from his cheeks, though he had no doubt that the way his eyes looked, glassy and swollen, betrayed more than the wet marks on his skin could ever have. Rising from the bench, he turned his attention to the path in front of the tavern, and when he finally saw who was standing on it, the anger in him began simmering again. 

"What the hell are you doing here?" He growled, approaching Josephine with sweeping steps. 

The blonde flinched at the sound of his voice, her head jerking up. 

The blue eyes that looked at him were suddenly so full of adoration, it took his breath away. Unconsciously he took a step back, unable to stand still under her piercing gaze. 

He was about to ask: what kind of a sick game is this? What this is all about? Why are you looking at me like that? But before even one of these questions formed on his lips, he heard a quiet voice: 

"...Bellamy?" 

And time, as if for this one, precious moment, just stopped. 

Because it wasn’t Josephine. 

It just wasn’t. 

Not with how her voice sounded. Not with the way she tilted her head. Not with the way she scrunched her eyebrows. Not with how her body unknowingly relaxed in his presence.   

"Clarke?" 

It was merely a whisper, but it was enough. 

When he heard her quiet sniff, the bubble broke and everything finally began to move again. He was not sure who made the first step. Which of them first reached out, squeezed the other so tightly that they almost couldn’t breathe. Or maybe that wasn’t why they were breathless? 

"It's really you." 

"It's really me." 

The world, out of joint just seconds before, finally straightened its axis. 

"I'm so sorry." Bellamy wasn’t sure what he was apologizing for. Having her go through hell, letting it happen, or giving up so easily. Maybe none of them. Maybe all of them. 

"Bellamy..." her voice hitched, "there's nothing to forgive." 

He nodded, burying his face in the crook of her neck. He said it once before. Forgiveness was hard for him, especially one directed at himself. Despite her words, the lightness of absolution wasn’t there yet. But they will get there. Hopefully. Together.  

But that’s when it happened. 

A scream tore through the night. 

"Clarke, what’s wrong?!" 

The girl bent her back as if she was possessed, clawing at her head in desperation. Her nails digging into the skin, leaving behind a trail of the red marks with every move of her fingers. Bellamy grabbed her, restraining her wrists, when another horrific cry came out of her throat. 

Out of the corner of his eye, Bellamy noticed people emerging from the tavern. _Finally._ Thankfully Madi wasn't amongst them; he didn't know what would she do seeing Clarke in this state. When the group took in the whole scene, the only thing on their faces was an all-embracing confusion. 

"Bellamy, what..." 

He didn’t let Murphy finish. 

"It's Clarke! She’s still in there!" 

"What?!" Emori exclaimed in disbelief. 

"Impossible, Josephine said it was permanent..." 

"It's not!" Murphy jerked as if struck. If it's true, if it really was Clarke, that means he literally traded her life for his own... Time and time again he rubbed it into her face that she left them to die on Earth, and here he was, Murphy, the reformed cockroach, doing something even worse. All the blood drained from his face. He deserved to go to hell. The two chips in his pocket suddenly felt like a ballast pulling him to the bottom of the sea.

"No... No!" Clarke struggled in Bellamy's arms, black blood now streaming down her nose. "I don’t want to forget. Please don’t make me forget!" 

"Forget what?" asked Echo. 

"Everything," came the delirious answer. 

There was no time for hesitation. Bellamy lifted her in his arms, ingoring the sudden pressure on his injured leg. Pulled her closer as much for her safety as for his own peace of mind. She relaxed slightly, but the heat radiating from her body seemed unnatural. It was a fever. 

„We need to take this chip out of her head.” 

„We don’t know what it will do to her,” Emori quickly interjected. 

„It can’t be worse than this.” He was sure of that. Nothing can be worse than the mind of a homicidal maniac trying to rip you apart. Or watching them doing that to your loved one. 

"I'll call Raven and Abby, we need them." Echo’s mind was already working the problem, for which Bellamy was grateful. 

“Go.” He didn't waver. The spy glanced at him with a thoughtful expression, but didn't say anything and run to the radio. 

"We need to find someplace safe". 

"Basement.” Murphy suddenly snapped out of his daze. "The tavern has a basement. It's underground, so it will mute sounds, and maybe her yelling her guts out won't wake up every damn person in this town. Or at least those who haven’t woken up yet.” 

"How do you know about it?" Bellamy glared at him with suspicion. That was their sad new reality: he betrayed them, his word no longer meant what it did before. 

Murphy clicked his tongue, irritated. 

"They store their best booze there." Seeing no reaction, he impatiently rolled his eyes. "Look, we can either stay here and let her continue with this cray cray show, or hide. Your call." 

Begrudgingly, Bellamy pointed his chin at the door. It was their only choice. Again. He was so damn tired of those.

"Hold on. We will get through this," he whispered, looking at Clarke. She finally lost consciousness, which he tried to treat as a small blessing, the strain on her mind must have been unimaginable, but he couldn’t stop the growing dread.... what if she never wakes up again? 

No. 

He couldn’t let himself think like that. He won’t. He has already lost her twice and if he has something to say in this matter, he will never lose her again. 

 

*~*~* 

 

Clarke's consciousness was slowly drifting away. 

She promised. She fought to keep her word. She didn’t succeed yet again. 

In the end, her head forgot him too. His black curls, cheeks sprinkled with freckles and a cheeky grin. This person who meant the world to her became nothing more than a silhouette in the dusk, fading as the sun of the very essence of Clarke Griffin slowly went down. Everything gone. 

But her heart remembered. An all-encompassing love. Love bigger than anything else. One that overcame everything, even death itself. Love uncertain, but love strong. Love that saved her time and time again. 

Love that will save her this time too.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for any mistakes or typos – I'm not an English native speaker and I really suck at proofreading my own work. But I hope you enjoyed it!


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